


What If

by Cherry_Coco_Berry



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Blood, Character Death, Mild Blood, Minor Violence, Sad, The Author Regrets Nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-09
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2018-03-17 03:16:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3513233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cherry_Coco_Berry/pseuds/Cherry_Coco_Berry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One scenario that could have happened if Bunny hit Jack after the Easter fiasco.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own rise of the guardians or the characters, I only own the plot.
> 
> Special thanks to my betas, HEB and eternal_insane_silence.

"He has to go," Bunny said, his voice sad. Jack whipped around and faced him, shocked.

"What?" he asked in a breathless voice, not believing what he heard.

"We NEVER should have trusted you!" Bunny shouted in anger, punching Jack, his superior strength knocking him to the ground. Jack looked up at him in pain, holding his cheek where a deep purple bruise was already forming. Bunny advanced on him more, not noticing how terrified the young teen was.

"Easter is about new beginnings, new life. Easter is about hope." Bunny turned away from, unable to look at him anymore. Jack quickly scrambled back in fear of him. "And now it's gone."

Jack looked toward the others, hoping that they would believe him, but they faced the other direction, disappointment etched into their faces. Jack stood up slowly, wincing when he felt a bruise forming on his back from how he had landed. Turning around, he reached into the pocket of his hoodie and pulled out the tiny wooden nesting doll North gave to him. He couldn't help but think of how this is what Pitch had said would happen. Heartbroken and in tears, he dropped the doll on the ground and flew away toward Antarctica.

* * *

Jack sat cross legged on a peak in the Arctic that overlooks the ocean. He sighed and held his head in his hands. Pitch was right; he just made a mess of everything. If he hadn't wanted to know the identity of that voice, this never would have happened. He looked up with tear tracks on his cheeks with the realization that this was all the fault of the tooth-box. He got up and screamed, about to throw the box into the ocean where he would never have to see it when his arm stopped. He couldn't do it, he couldn't.

"I thought this would happen. They never really believed in you." Jack jumped and turned around to see a man in a black robe. He flew gently toward him and landed. Pitch looked out toward him, and noticed the bruise. "I just wanted to show you the truth; I never imagined that they would harm you, a child under their care."

Jack quickly became angry; the guardians believed in him, they were just a little stressed out. Right? He jumped into the air, injuries forgotten and screamed.

"You're LYING!" he shouted, lashing out with his staff. Pitch had no choice but to defend himself, which soon turned into attacking.

"Why would I lie?" he screamed. "I know what it looks like when people are cast out! I was!" Pitch's voice grew soft and caring as he stopped firing black sand. "I just want a friend." Jack to paused, disbelief on his face, as the Nightmare King continued. "Join me; we don't have to be alone anymore. I believe in you and I know the children will too."

"In - In me?" Jack asked, unable to believe it could be true. He had longed for belief, for a friend, for three hundred years. Pitch could be that friend, maybe even become like family. He saw Pitch gesture to a terrifying statue of black sand encased in jagged ice.

"Yes! Look at what we can do!" Jack turned and looked at his broken reflection in the ice. "What goes together better than cold and dark? We can MAKE them believe. We'll give them a world where everything, EVERYTHING is..."

Sensing the trap, Jack finished his sentence with a bored expression, "Pitch black?"

Realizing how it looked, he quickly finished. "And Jack Frost, too. They'll believe in both of us."

Looking up at Pitch, Jack considered the offer before refusing. He turned and walked away slowly, the pain of his previous injuries coming back to him ten times stronger. "No, they'll fear both of us and that's not what I want. Now, for the last time, leave me alone."

Pitch's anger ignites. He had been nothing but patient with Jack. He even showed him the truth and made himself vulnerable, yet his answer was still no. If he couldn't have Jack join him, he would need to get rid of him. He reached a hand behind his back.

"Very well. You want to be left alone? Done. But first..."

Jack flips around at a familiar twitter, then groans having irritated his injuries.

"Baby Tooth!" Her eyes were wide with terror and Jack lunged forward. When Pitch tightened the fist he held her in, he stopped and raised his staff, ready to freeze the man if he hurt Baby Tooth again.

"The staff, Jack!" he shouted, making the frost child settle. "You have a bad habit of interfering. Now hand it over and I'll let her go."

Pitch watched as Jack flipped what his connection to the wind, his only way to leave, in his hand. He felt the wretched fairy struggle to escape and tightened his grip. In Jack's eyes, he could see that he thought he had no other choice. The end of the staff landed in his outstretched palm and he took it, giving it a twirl.

"Alright, now let her go," Jack said with steel in his voice.

"No. You said you wanted to be alone, so be alone!"

Baby Tooth squirmed until she was able to peck Pitch in the hand with her sharp beak. Pitch let out a shout and threw her in the air and down the mouth of a crevasse. When Jack saw her disappear into the ice, he gave an anguished cry, unable to believe that he lost the only friend he had left. He turned back to Pitch in time to see him raise his staff over his knee and break it in half.

Jack cried out in pain and closed his eyes as the staff broke and clutched at his chest. His eyes only opened long enough for him to see nightmare sand hit him in the chest and send him flying into the wall of the crevasse, breaking most of his ribs. His eyes closed as he passed out before he could hit the bottom and break one of his arms.

* * *

He awoke moments later to see a blurry image of Baby Tooth looking at him in worry and the two halves of his staff laying on the other side of the hole. He went to lean forward only to fall back with a hiss. Knowing he would only pass out again if he moved his chest, he reached his arms out. He knew something was wrong when he saw that his left arm was bent backward, he gently touched it with his other hand and let out a yelp of pain. He reached his good arm out and scooped up the shivering fairy who chirped at him and pointed at the ground below him. Worried, he whipped his head down which only resulted in him becoming dizzy and his vision going black for a moment.

When his vision cleared and the world stopped spinning, he looked at the ice. It was red all around him, fading to pink the further away it got. After setting Baby Tooth on his hoodie, he reached out his hand and felt a wet drop on it which, once he looked, he found was blood. Another drop fell, and another, and soon his whole hand was covered in the red substance. He shuddered at the feel and wiped it off in the nearby snow.

He turned back to Baby Tooth and saw her wings frozen together, small drops of his blood resting on them. Suddenly, he felt a sharp pain in his head and his world went black.

Baby Tooth looked worriedly at Jack as his chin fell limply to his chest. She had heard him scream when he hit the wall and could hear the harsh crack from where she lay. Only then did she notice the yellowing bruise on the side of his head. Chirping, she tried to wake him up. If it had been Pitch, she should have hurt him more.

The first thing he heard as he woke again was a soft chirping, causing his eyelids to flutter open and shut. With each short glance, he could see the tiny fairy curled on his sweater, staring at him, or more specifically, the mark on his face. When she realized he was awake, she chirped and pointed at his cheek and glared, as if demanding an explanation.

"Oh, Baby Tooth," frozen tears leaked from the corners of his eyes, "It's all my fault. Pitch was right. After - after I lost you I went to find the others. They -" A broken sob escaped him, "They saw the box and thought I traded you for - they thought I gave you to Pitch, they didn't - wouldn't let me explain. Bunny - he hit me. I - I TRUSTED them!"

Baby Tooth watched in shock as the boy who was always happy broke down. He had given his trust to them and they broke it in the worst way. The thing she hated the most, though, at that moment was the fact that Jack seemed to believe that - in some twisted way - he deserved it. Though she was barely able to move her limbs, she jumped up and climbed his jacket to his shoulder and gently patted an uninjured area of his cheek, silently telling his that it was okay - that it would be alright.

Jack turned his head to face Baby Tooth and thank her for listening and gasped. He couldn't breathe. He opened his mouth to suck in a breath but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't. His hand moved to where his lungs were and gently touched the area. The rib that stood guard and protected his lungs was cracked. When he had begun sobbing the bone had stabbed toward it, the shaking of his shoulders only causing it to stab further inward. It was only then that he realized that he was freezing.

The cold seemed to surround him, and, though it was once comforting, seemed to choke him. His feet, he realized, he couldn't feel his feet! Terrified, he looked to Baby Tooth only to see that she had frozen, forever to be encased in a layer of his ice. He couldn't take it anymore. He failed everyone. When the man in the moon chose him, it must have been a mistake. The only thing he seemed to be good at was messing up.

Soon, he found himself unable to move; all of his limbs seemed to be filled with concrete, his head filled with wool. He couldn't think straight. The walls that once only seemed to be thirty feet tall now seemed like a thousand. Then, all he saw was the blue of his hoodie. Through the fog in his head, he wondered when he had begun to look down. Even though he couldn't get air into his lungs, he giggled. Everything looked funny. He giggled until the sound faded to a gurgle. His crystal blue eyes looked ahead, not blinking, as his heart stopped.


	2. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the end, when the battles are won and the heroes reign victorious, can they truly accept what harm they've caused?

The guardians stumbled through the streets of Burgess, trying with all of their might to reach the last light. Bunny, now an actual rabbit instead of the once proud Pooka warrior, remained in the sleigh. His chest was clenched and unshed tears stung his eyes. There was only one light, one child left still believing in him - in  _them._

And it was all Jack Frost's fault.

No matter how much his head protested against the thought and told him that the frost spirit was too child-like for such an act of betrayal, his heart still cried out in rage. The Man in the Moon had made a mistake, Jack Frost should never have been Chosen.

Snapping out of his thoughts at the sound of feet crunching over fresh snow, he saw the other guardians hobbling back to the sleigh, tired but grinning victoriously. The last light was with them, holding tight to North and Tooth's hands and staring up at them with eyes glowing in wonder. Bunny's ears perked up and he hopped to the front of the battered red sleigh, foot thumping in poorly-concealed joy.

"I  _knew_ you were real!" the boy-- _Jamie,_ his mind supplied--grinned and continued, "My friends stopped believing but I never did, you  _had_ to be real!"

North smiled gently down at the boy and opened his mouth but what he planned to say was cut off by the deafening thunder of hooves on pavement. Bunnymund glanced up and paled, a tidal-wave of Nightmares was heading their way and even with one last believer they were virtually powerless.

Toothiana, sensing her comrades sudden fear, glanced behind her and barely stifled a scream. She scooped up the young human boy into her arms and ran as fast as she could on weak, rarely used legs. Jamie took charge then, directing them to the houses of his friends. Despite having no powers, they convinced a handful of children that the story-book heroes weren't make-believe.

With children in tow, the Guardians fled the fast-approaching wave of terror only to end up cornered in an alleyway. The rolling black mass stopped mere meters in front of the group and parted, revealing their leader. Pitch Black.

From atop his Nightmare, Pitch cackled.

"It seems," he began, voice as smooth as silk but deadly as a viper, "that you are missing someone."

Behind the Guardians the children broke into hushed conversation.  _Another Guardian? The_ Sandman _? Was_ he  _real too?_

North, ever the brave man, was the one to speak up.

"Yes," he replied, sad and more than a little confused, "the Sandman. Good friend."

Pitch could barely believe his ears. Were they  _denying_ the existence of one of their own? Did they truly not care about Jack Frost?

 _No,_ he realized, they  _did_ care. They just thought him to be a traitor. Now it seemed he should set them straight.

"Not  _him,_ " the Boogeyman sneered, "Your new recruit. Poor little Jackson Frost, the lonely winter spirit who no-one believes in. It truly is a shame that you fools kicked him out of your little Girl Scout troop."

Bunny snarled, fur bristling at the thought of the winter spirit, the  _traitor._

"Oh," Pitch cried in false shock, "You didn't know? That little brat never betrayed you, not on purpose at least. It's not his fault that he couldn't resist the voice calling to him from his tooth-box. You of all people, Toothiana, should know that the allure on them is too great for even a spirit to ignore. Especially a spirit as alone and afraid as Jack Frost.

"But of course, you don't care, do you? He still traded in your precious  _Baby Tooth_ for a box of everything he had longed for. Family. His memories. A chance to understand  _why he's here._ Now I do hate to break it to you, but he never gave me your little fairy. I took her from him."

Hearing this, the children were confused. Who was Jack Frost? Why did their heroes suddenly look so small and pained?

Pitch continued, "Luring him to my lair was the easy part, though telling him how pathetic and worthless he was wasn't exactly hard to do either. After that it was only a matter of disorienting him in a maze of tunnels and throwing him the incriminating box of teeth before I could send him back to you. And then,  _ohhh_ and  _then!_

"I expect your anger at him, your sense of betrayal. What I  _never_ imagined is that you would  _hit him!_ It was too perfect to imagine! And after he ran away from you I simply had to follow him to Antarctica to confront him. I must say,  _Easter Bunny,_ that I didn't think you had it in you to hit a child hard enough to bruise so quickly. You should have seen the boy, so pathetic and desperate. Even then though, after your ultimate betrayal of him, he remained loyal. So I stranded him there. Do not expect any help to come, Guardians. Not from the only one alive that has a chance to help save you."

With that, the Nightmares charged.

As the hellish herd came crashing down on them, Jamie reached out.

"I may never have heard of Jack Frost, but if he's as good as you say he is? Then I believe in him. I believe in  _all_ of the Guardians."

Gold sand erupted from the black at his touch, lighting up the night with a feeling of awe and true happiness. The Guardians were shaken from their depressed stupor by this, nearly unable to process that a young boy who was barely even a teenager could bring back their dead friend.

The golden sand floated leisurely up into the sky and became a swirling vortex, soon parting to reveal the whole and healthy form of the Sandman. He quickly spun his dreams, sending them out to children and adults all across the globe. Within moments the legends could feel their strength returning. Toothiana's wings, once lifeless and weak, lit up in a rainbow of colors while Bunny re-grew to his origin height.

Form then the battle truly began.

Whips of gold sand and razor-sharp wings cut through the Nightmares and the children ran around with outstretched hand turning darkness into what it used to be. Bunny and North teamed up against Pitch, forcing him to retreat and just when they thought he was going to escape, Sandy struck.

Everything was a blur of gold for a moment and when it cleared they saw the Boogeyman was finished, defeated.

He scuttled back to his lair to lick his wounds with the remaining nightmare horses on his heels, turning on their creator. It was only after the team dropped the children off at their homes that Sandy asked about the missing frost child.

* * *

The group trudged through the snow of the Antarctic, determined to find their newest member and apologize for their horrendous mistake. They had used a snowglobe to open a portal near the winter spirit but the continent was a vast place to search when you were looking for one small creature among the mountains of snow.

Finally something caught their eyes. It was a massive sculpture of dangerously spiked ice and frozen grains of black sand. Just the sight of it from afar sent shivers down the spines of the group. Then they realized that that was a sign of a fight, one which the winter spirit must have lost.

Their pace quickened to a frantic run that almost sent Bunnymund tumbling to his death via a gouge in the ice. He skidded to a rough stop at the very edge of the drop and couldn't help but chance a glance downward and almost gagged.

The bottom of the gorge wasn't the same pristine white as the rest of the land but a sickening pink. Fearing the worst he drew upon the skills he had once possessed as a warrior Pooka and lowered himself down, uncaring if the other followed him or stayed above ground.

The icy wall was burning his paws but the closer he got to the bottom of the drop the more reason he found to keep going. Jack Frost was in the bottom of the hole, clutching a frozen solid fairy.

By the time Bunnymund had reached land once more, Tooth and Sandy were already huddled around their lost child. Jack's body was bruised and covered in blood and nightmare sand, little cuts adorned his skin. It took the Pooka's eyes only a moment to pick out the dark bruise on kids' cheek and his ears dropped in shame. _He_ had caused that.

By then North had managed to make his way down and he walked towards them, the broken staff of the beaten spirit in his large hands.

"Jack's staff," Tooth breathed in horror, "What happened to it?"

Sandy, however, didn't tear his eyes away for the winter spirit. Bunny stared for a moment longer at the boy before realizing something horrifying,  _Jack wasn't breathing._

Bunny roughly pushed past his friends and lowered an ear onto Jack's chest; there was nothing.

The usually unemotional creature keened and lifted the body into his arms. Fresh blood soaked onto his paws at the disturbance and matted his fur but he didn't care-- _couldn't_ care.

Tooth took one look at Bunny and the way he held Jack and began to cry, leaning into North for comfort.

Together the group huddled in the freezing air, crying tears that turned to ice on their cheeks and clutching each other as if their lives depended on it. They had never lost a friend before, never hurt someone so horribly and never had the chance to say that they were  _sorry_ and that they would take back everything if only they could see their friend happy again.  _Alive_ again.

As they stayed pressed against each other, clutching at the bruised, dead body of a child they never had the chance to know, they had to wonder if this price they paid for winning the battle would ever be worth it.

 

 

 

_It never would._

 


End file.
